The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories

by Rachna Bisht Rawat

  At quarter to eight Mrs Tarapore was relieved to hear the sound of a vehicle in the driveway. It was her husband’s jeep. When the jeep stopped at the porch and Adi got off, she was horrified to see him walk in with his uniform covered in slush. His driver and wireless operator were similarly covered in grime. The kids and the guests had also collected around him by then and Adi apologetically told the group that his jeep had got stuck in the Gurari Nala, a stream that then flowed outside Babina. His uniform was dirty because he had helped his men push it to get it out of the slush. The guest, who was quite enamoured of Adi’s rank and status, expressed shock that despite being the CO of the regiment, Adi had to get into the water to push the jeep. The normally gentle and polite Adi stiffened at that and retorted: ‘I am not made of sugar and salt that I’d get washed away. Anything my men do, I do with them.’

  Zarine, was listening to her father. She would never forget his words or his love for his men. Adi was to spend just one more year with his family. In September 1965, during the biggest tank battle fought between India and Pakistan at Phillora in the Sialkot sector, an enemy shell would hit his tank. Adi would be standing in the cupola when the tank would erupt in flames consuming him and his intelligence officer. He would die a hero’s death right there on the battlefield, to the shock of the men he loved so much. At that time his left arm was already in a sling from an earlier injury for which he had stubbornly refused to be evacuated. Before that he would have led his men right into Pakistan and his unit would have successfully captured Jassoran and Buttar Dograndi. For the valour displayed by him in this action, lasting six days, Lt Col Ardeshir Burzorji Tarapore, would be awarded with the highest war-time gallantry medal, PVC, posthumously.

  A born soldier

  Ardeshir Burzorji Tarapore, lovingly called Adi by his friends, was born on 18 August 1923 in Mumbai. It is believed that the family name Tarapore came from the village of Tarapore that was one of the 100 in the mansab (estate) awarded by Shivaji to his ancestor, who was a leader under the Maratha ruler eight generations back. The mansab was given as an appreciation for his courage and loyalty and incidentally these were the very qualities evident in Adi also, right from the time when he was a little boy.

  There is an interesting story about his childhood. Adi had an older sister and a younger brother. When he was six, he was once playing with his 10-year-old sister Yadgar in their backyard. The family cow broke loose and charged at Yadgar. While Yadgar screamed in terror, little Adi quickly reacted. Picking up a stick, he stepped in front of the cow and smacked it on the nose with it. The startled cow backed off and the two children went back to their game.

  This quality of fearlessness remained with Adi even as he got older. In those days, Hyderabad was a separate state and though Adi had his heart set upon joining the armoured regiment after leaving school, he was commissioned into the 7th Hyderabad Infantry as a Second Lieutenant in January 1942. How he got the Lancers and then Poona Horse is another interesting story.

  It happened quite by chance. Once, when his battalion was being inspected by Major General El Edroos, the commander- in-chief of the Hyderabad state forces, during routine grenade- throwing training, a young sepoy panicked and accidentally lobbed his grenade right into the throwing bay. Without a thought for his own safety, Adi immediately jumped in and, picking up the grenade, flung it away. The grenade burst as it left his hand, and flying shrapnel embedded in his chest, but there were no other casualties. Maj Gen El Edroos was very impressed with the young officer and, when Adi had recovered from his injuries, called him to his office to congratulate him. Adi requested him for a transfer to an armoured regiment, and the general had him posted to the 1st Hyderabad Imperial Service Lancers. And thus Adi’s dream was fulfilled.

  Controversy, however, continued to dog Adi. During World War II the 1st Hyderabad Lancers saw service in the Middle East and was commanded by a British officer, who was rude and often criticized the fighting capabilities of the ‘natives’ under his command. On one occasion he insulted the Nizam. Tarapore, who was present, took strong exception to this and boldly told his CO, ‘You have insulted my country and my king, and I do not mean George VI.’

  The incident created a furore. The regiment was put into isolation and all its ammunition withdrawn. The matter was finally settled after Maj Gen El Edroos visited General Montgomery and Adi’s career saved.

  Adi joins the Poona Horse

  Tarapore was posted to the the Poona Horse, or 17 Horse, after the merger of the Hyderabad State with the Union of India. There he joined A Squadron (which was a Rajput squadron) and, despite being a non-Rajput, developed such a close rapport with the men, that he was jokingly given the unofficial designation of ‘Colonel of A Squadron’.

  Lt Col Shivraj Singh, who was a newly commissioned subaltern at Chatha Camp in Jammu when Tarapore first joined the regiment, has written about the day Tarapore joined. ‘Sometime in late 1951, news was received that an officer, ex-Hyderabad Lancers, was being posted to the regiment; he would be on probation for two years and would be given a permanent commission in the Army, only if he was found fit for retention in service. One fine day, when the officers were all sipping beer under the shade of a mango tree near the mess hutment, a well-built young officer of medium height walked in along with the second-in-command (2-IC) and was introduced as Captain Ardeshir B. Tarapore. The officer was very neatly and correctly dressed in his olive green uniform. He appeared somewhat shy and reticent, but confident, and was very polite and correct in his manners and conduct.’

  That was Tarapore and soon he would become the darling of the regiment. In fact, he would develop such strong loyalty to 17 Horse that he would even start growing the fearsome cavalier moustache, modelling it on senior squadron NCO (non-commissioned officer) Bahadur Singh’s moustache, and he would proudly tell the other officers that he was just following the ‘true A Squadron tradition’. Even when he commanded the regiment many years later, Tarapore continued to sport this impressive moustache. He was fond of saying that the commandant of The 17 Horse only looked like a commandant if he sported a cavalier moustache.

  Tarapore idolized Napoleon, Lt Col Shivraj remembers. He read about Napoleon extensively, often quoted him, and even kept a bust of the great man on his desk. In fact, when he was in high spirits, Tarapore often tried to emulate Napoleon much to the delight of other officers. Once, in the mess after a number of ‘Har Har Mahadevs’ preceded everyone downing their drinks, spirits were quite high, and Tarapore, after a few whiskeys, suddenly declared that he was a reincarnation of Napoleon. To prove it he struck a hero-like pose but felt the impersonation was incomplete without the right headgear. His eyes soon rested on the large silver mess bowl filled with water and floating rose petals. Tarapore quickly picked it up and inverted it over his bald pate, to represent Napoleon’s hat. He then stuck his right hand into the jacket of his mess dress and adopted a typical Napoleonic stance. He was thoroughly drenched but his spirits were not dampened at all. For his fellow officers it was wholesome entertainment.

  Tarapore is remembered by all his men and officers for his fearlessness and for being a hands-on CO. No task was too small for him. He often surprised soldiers by personally helping them load ammunition on to tanks, something that most other officers did not do. Sowar Nathu Singh remembers the time when Centurion tanks had just been introduced to the regiment, and the one he was driving had started making a lot of noise making him wonder what was wrong. Suddenly he saw Tarapore Saab (Sahib), who had been watching from afar, sprinting up to him. Reaching the tank, Tarapore jumped up to the cupola and gently told Nathu, ‘Baccha, raise kam karo’ (Child, lower the raise [of the engine]). Tarapore had gone abroad, trained and brought back Centurion tanks to the unit and no one knew them better than him.

  When he was not fooling around with the boys in the mess, Tarapore was a good, steady, regimental officer. What made him stand out was that not only could he take quick decisions, he could also pick unorthodox solution
s when the occasion demanded it. In 1962, Tarapore was officiating as the commandant, when the regiment received orders to move to its operational location within 24 hours. If normal procedures were followed, there was no way the regiment could have got ready in time, so Tarapore ordered the security fencing around the quarter guard, the regimental stores and the ammunition dump to be broken. Vehicles were driven up to the stores and loaded, and the tanks taken right up to the ammunition bays and stowed with ammunition. The entire regiment worked through the night and was able to move on schedule. The military engineering services could go on raising damage reports, which could be sorted out later! That was the kind of casual confidence with which Tarapore led his regiment even when he came back to command the 17 Horse and take on the might of Pakistan three years later.

  The Battle of Chawinda was part of the Sialkot Campaign in the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965. It was one of the largest tank battles in history since the Battle of Kursk in World War II. The aim of the attack was to seize the key Grand Trunk Road around Wazirabad and Jassoran, which would enable domination of Sialkot-Pasrur railway, thus completely cutting off the Pakistani supply line. The striking force of the Indian 1st Corps was the 1st Armoured Division supported by the 14th Infantry and 6th Mountain Divisions and Indian infantry seized the border area on 7 September.

  Crossing the border

  On 27 August 1965, war was declared. Maj Ajai Singh of17 Horse, who was home on leave for his son’s birth, got to know of it when his father-in-law told him that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shashtri was addressing the nation on the radio.

  The 17 Horse was at Kapurthala when the war was declared. Officers on leave, like Maj Ajai Singh, located their regiment following what they heard from locals about the tank movement. When Maj Ajai Singh finally found his unit and his CO, they had reached a village ahead of Samba. ‘The reality of that war was that there were no maps, no one knew where to go; we were just told to be ready to go whenever the orders came, ‘ he remembers nostalgically. The orders finally came one night.

  It had rained in the night and the fields were full of slush. It was a cold winter morning when school-going children and women on their way to fill water in Barkhania, a border village of Pakistan, were surprised to see green battle tanks splashing past. They stood and watched in awe waving to the men in dungarees, who were standing upright in open cupolas. Some called out to the soldiers, who smiled back at them, while others just gaped at the 45 monster machines rumbling past languidly, one behind the other.

  What the Pakistani villagers did not know was that these were the feared Centurion tanks of 17 Horse. They had received orders in the night to cross the Indo-Pak border at first light and that was exactly what they were doing. Lt Col Tarapore had passed on strict instructions that civilians were not to be harmed. ‘Our fight is with the Army. We shall not touch any innocent men, women or children, ‘ was what he had said, his voice cracking on the wireless sets. All the men could hear it. And that was why the villagers had mistaken them for friendly Pakistani soldiers.

  Till the night before, the men of 17 Horse had been waiting patiently in their tents, 8 km inside of the border. In the night they could not only hear, but also see the firing between the two clashing armies. Needless to say, they were raring to join the battle. When the orders finally came, the nervous tension of the wait was immediately relieved and the men started preparing for war in earnest. They would finally see some action.

  The Battle of Chawinda

  It was the first day of the battle of Chawinda. The regiment was deployed in Sialkot district of Pakistan’s Punjab province. When Lt Col Tarapore called his second-in-command Maj N. S. Cheema (now Lt Gen [retd]) aside, the latter thought it was a regular war briefing that the CO wanted to give him. However, it seems that the colonel had had a premonition about his own death.

  Maj Cheema was surprised when Lt Col Tarapore went on to give him detailed instructions on what do in case he was killed in battle. ‘”I must be cremated in the battlefield,” he said. “My prayer book must be given to my mother; my gold chain to my wife; my ring to my daughter; my bracelet and pen to my son,”’ Col Tarapore told (then) Maj Cheema, who later recounted this to Sakal Times in an interview. ‘He paused and then added, “And, Niranjan, please tell my son Xerxes to join the army”.’ Five days later, on 16 September 1965, Tarapore was fatally wounded after being hit by an enemy artillery shell.

  The biggest tank battle of the 1965 Indo-Pak War took place at Phillora in the Sialkot sector. During the southern thrust of the Indian Army on the Kaloi-Phillora axis, 17 Horse commanded by Lt Col Tarapore advanced on the right flank.

  The battle for Phillora started on 10 September with the Indian troops launching a massive attack. On 11 September, the regiment was assigned the task of delivering the main armoured thrust for capturing Phillora. It decided upon launching a surprise attack on Phillora from the rear. The 1st Armoured Division, equipped with four armoured regiments, was on the offensive in the area. Unstopped by the enemy, the tanks just kept moving into Pakistan. At around 11 a. m. the first air attack came. Till then the buggers had had no idea that we were so much inside their country, ‘ chuckles General Ajai Singh, who was a young major in the C Squadron of 17 Horse, which was leading. Pakistan surprised the advancing Army by sudden strafing though the air attacks did more damage to lorry and infantry columns and less to the tanks. The toll was heavy, however, Gen Ajai Singh remembers; the regiments 16 Cavalry and Hodson Horse were butchered. There was complete chaos. Many of the men standing in their cupolas were hit and just collapsed or were badly injured. Gen Ajai Singh remembers he was standing on his turret when a shell hit his toolbox and his blanket caught fire. The fire was quickly put out and no damages were incurred.

  The Patton tanks of Pakistan were facing the armoured units 16 Cavalry and Hodson Horse. The air attack had taken such a heavy toll that they were reeling back. The morale of the men was at a low. It was at this time that, on Tarapore’s initiative, 17 Horse moved in to stabilize the situation. As was typical of him, he did not wait for instructions and just attacked the Pakistanis without any warning. ‘And what a ferocious attack it was, ‘ says the old General remembering that smoke-filled morning with pride. ‘We destroyed 13 tanks in the first go.’ Intense fighting continued for two days and Pakistani forces were forced to beat a retreat towards Chawinda. Phillora was captured by the Indians 3. 30 p. m. on 11 September. Pakistan’s 11 Cavalry fought well, but lost so many tanks that from that day onwards it ceased to function as a complete tank regiment. Tarapore was wounded in the operation. A splinter had smashed through his arm leaving a gaping wound. Since he was not able to move his arm, it had to be put in a sling.

  After the capture of Phillora, the brigade commander and general officer commanding came over to compliment 17 Horse. Immediate awards were discussed but Lt Col Tarapore brushed them offsaying his regiment was just doing its duty. He refused to be evacuated insisting that the wound was ‘just a scratch’. Besides, he still had to oversee the attack on Chawinda. Meanwhile the Pakistani forces retreated and regrouped. They would put up a last fight at Chawinda.

  The capture of Buttar Dograndi

  The plan was that Chawinda would be attacked by the infantry on the afternoon of 13-14 September and 17 Horse would encircle it. The task was given to C Squadron. Gen Ajai Singh remembers how his squadron’s tanks started moving in with 9 Garhwal as support. The Indian Army did not realize that Pakistani tanks were already hiding under cover in Buttar Dograndi, waiting for the attack. When C Squadron’s tanks broke cover to attack the village, six out of ten were shot on the spot by the Pakistani Pattons. Since the enemy was hidden and the 17 Horse tanks had to move out of the sugar cane fields and expose themselves for the attack, the situation quickly took a turn for the worse. Maj Ajai Singh immediately called his CO on the wireless and informed him about the situation.

  ‘I asked him for immediate reinforcements otherwise Buttar Dograndi would be lost.’ He recollects
how Tarapore moved in at once with his own tank while directing A Squadron to join the battle as well. ‘I don’t know if the message got relayed properly or not in the complete chaos of war but when the others saw the CO’s tank moving towards Buttar Dograndi, some started following him as well. The result was that I had reinforcements.’ says Gen Ajai Singh.

  While the Pakistani Pattons were well-hidden in the foliage in the village a km away, the Indian tanks had broken cover from sugar cane fields for the attack. It was a daring attack, but the nine Centurions— which included five of Maj Ajai Singh, three of A Squadron and one of CO Tarapore—attacked the Pattons and destroyed all six of them. Buttar Dograndi was captured.

  It was a moment of silent celebration for 17 Horse and its CO. Not only had Lt Col Tarapore defied the enemy’s charge, he had held his ground and gallantly attacked Phillora. Though under continuous enemy tank and artillery fire, he had remained unperturbed throughout this action. When wounded, he had refused to be evacuated.

  On 14 September, he again led his regiment to capture Wazirwali. Unmindful of his injury, he captured Jassoran and Buttar Dograndi on 16 September. In this battle his own tank was hit several times. But despite the odds, he maintained his pivots at both these places and thereby helped the supporting infantry to attack Chawinda from the rear. Inspired by his leadership, the regiment fiercely attacked and destroyed approximately 60 enemy tanks, suffering only nine tank casualties.

  The valour displayed by him in this action, lasting six days, was in keeping with the highest traditions of the Indian Army. But soon, he would meet a painful though glorious end.

  The last day